I remember a column about this about 5 years ago when I still read Salon. A woman wrote about this very issue, quoting her mother, “you have choices we never had”, in a discussion about the difficulty on committing to buying a baby stroller. My own sister in law, when my brother and I were choosing bathroom fixtures at Home Depot for a house we co-own, said something to the effect that, “in Romania we only had one choice.”

I think we notice this more because of the perfectionist nature of many women, and the fear of making a “wrong choice”, as if buying the wrong bathroom faucet handle or baby stroller or jam for breakfast will cause a reaction like the Nazi at the Templar’s cave in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. “You have chosen unwisely.”